Best known as one of Mexico’s great muralists, José Clemente Orozco spent much of the early 1930s working in the United States, where he absorbed the industrial dynamism and contradictions of modern life. Painted in 1930, World’s Highest Structure reflects his fascination with progress and its perils during an era when skyscrapers were reaching unprecedented heights and symbolizing the ambitions of the modern age. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Jose Clemente Orozco, Worlds Highest Structure→
The Ruxton is one of the rarest and most unique automobiles of the Classic Era, combining innovative front-wheel-drive engineering with bold, avant-garde styling. Today, nearly three-quarters of all cars sold are front-wheel-drive, but during the late 1920s and early 1930s this drive layout was a foreign concept to most, except for a limited number of engineers and racing drivers. Continue reading Eye On Design: 1930 Ruxton Front Drive Sedan→
Raymond C. Yard (1885 – 1964) is considered to be one of the great Art Deco jewelers. After mastering the art of jewelry making at Marcus & Co., Yard opened his own shop at 607 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in 1922. Between 1928 and 1933 he created a series of charming Rabbit Brooches, each of which differs slightly, featuring fine details of gold, diamonds, rubies and sapphires. That the Rabbit Waiter brooch (1930) serves alcoholic drinks during Prohibition adds a certain humor to the whimsy, which would have appealed to Yard’s high-society clientele.
Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
A powerful rendering by the artist in her twenties, this picture was made with a practical purpose; it was painted as a reception piece for admission to the life-drawing course at the National Academy of Design. While Lee Krasner (1908 – 1984) is best known for the personal style that she developed within the movement of Abstract Expressionism in the 19540s, this self portrait (c. 1930) is a rare example of her early work, using the thick brushwork and high color of the Impressionists and Realists of the previous generation. Strikingly, Krasner depicts herself at work in nature. She eyes the viewer, who stands on the spot where, presumably, a mirror hangs on a tree. Her expression and strong handling of light and shade evoke the resolve of a young woman rising to the challenge of her artistic vocation.
Premiering at the Art Institute of Chicago in October 1930, Grant Wood’s American Gothic captivated the public’s imagination and catapulted Wood into the national spotlight overnight. The painting depicts a couple — modeled on Wood’s sister, Nan, and his Dentist — who stand in front of a Midwestern house. The house is notable for its lone “gothic” window, a typical feature of the then-popular Carpenter Gothic style of architecture, in which gothic elements are used in otherwise simple, modern wood structures.
